2016

Resumen: This paper studies the role of foreign employees as a channel for technology transfer in multina-tional companies (MNCs). We build a simple model of MNC choice between foreign and domestic management as a function of industry characteristics and of institutional quality. We nd that foreign employees are a channel for technology transfer within high-tech MNCs. Further, the reliance of MNCs on foreign employees is U-shaped in terms of institutional quality. Our model implies that we should observe the same pattern between technology transfer and institutional quality. We use a unique dataset that links information on technology transfer and the presence of foreign employees in subsidiaries in Mexico with data on judicial eciency across Mexican states. The evidence is consistent with the implications of the model and dicult to reconcile with alternative hypotheses..

Resumen:Indian engineering school admissions, which draw more than 300,000 applications per year, suffer from an important market failure: Through their affirmative action program, a certain number of seats are reserved for different lower castes and tribes. However, when some of these seats are unfilled, they are not offered to other groups, and the system is vastly wasteful. Moreover, since students care not only about the school they are assigned to but also whether they are assigned through reserves or not, they may strategically manipulate the system both by not revealing their privilege type and by changing their preferences over schools. In this paper, we propose a new matching model with contracts with the ability to release vacant seats to the use of other students by respecting certain affirmative action objectives. We design a new choice function for schools that respects affirmative action objectives, avoids waste, and increases efficiency. We propose a mechanism that is stable, strategy proof, and respects test-score improvements with respect to these choice functions. Moreover, we show that some distributional objectives that can be achieved by capacity transfers cannot be achieved by slot-specific priorities (i.e., lexicographic choice functions).

Resumen:We study the behavior of a decision maker who prefers alternative x to alternative y in menu A if the utility of x exceeds that of y by at least a threshold associated with y and A. Hence the decision maker’s preferences are given by menudependent interval orders. In every menu, her choice set comprises of undom inated alternatives according to this preference. We axiomatize this broad model when thresholds are monotone, i.e., at least as large in larger menus. We also obtain novel characterizations in two special cases that have appeared in the literature: the maximization of a fixed interval order where the thresholds depend on the alternative and not on the menu, and the maximization of monotone semiorders where the thresholds are independent of the alternatives but monotonic in menus.

Resumen: Motivated by the rise of social media, we build a model studying the effect of an economy’s potential for social learning on the adoption of innovations of uncertain quality. Provided consumers are forward-looking (i.e. recognize the value of waiting for information), equilibrium dynamics depend non-trivially on qualitative and quantitative features of the informational environment. We identify informational environments that are subject to a saturation effect, whereby increased opportunities.

Resumen: In this paper I show that the pairwise and set-wise stable allocations in many-to-one matching problems with contracts are equivalent under the choice procedures of schools that are constructed by dynamic reserves. I also show that the set of set-wise stable allocations is equal to the core. Hence, three seemingly different solution concepts coincide under the family of dynamic reserves choice functions for schools that fails the unilateral substitutability and the law of aggregate demand. Since many significant choice procedures developed in practical matching markets fall in this family of choice procedures, the equivalence provide us a way to express set-wise stability notion by the simpler pairwise stability for these real-life problems. It also makes it easier to define stability normatively for specific government goals.